


Heirlooms

by crocs



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canonical Character Death, F/F, Families of Choice, M/M, Starfleet Academy, Tarsus IV, wonky timeline
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-22
Updated: 2019-02-28
Packaged: 2019-10-14 14:01:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 3,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17509958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crocs/pseuds/crocs
Summary: Tilly blinks at the small bundle squirming about in Stamets's arms, looks up at the tiny hologram of Discovery rotating clockwise above them like a mobile — and then stammers out, "Baby?"One hundred single-sentence moments from a universe where Stamets (and the crew of Discovery) adopts a Winona (and later, a Jim). COMPLETE.





	1. one to twenty

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Spoilers through _Discovery_ 2x01 and _Into Darkness_.
> 
> Warnings: (Canonical) character death, Tarsus IV, (canonical) child neglect and (non-canonical) abandonment.
> 
> For this to feasibly work in any timeline, it is a truth universally understood that said timeline would have to look like a fun-house mirror. Most egregious errors: the various ages of Michael's family, the fact that the events of Discovery would have to be shifted back about forty years and Porthos the Immortal Beagle. At least I had fun.

**introduction:**

Tilly blinks at the small bundle squirming about in Stamets's arms, looks up at the tiny hologram of Discovery rotating clockwise above them like a mobile — and then stammers out, _"Baby?"_

 

**singing:**

Frowning, Michael replays the file and Winona crosses her arms, jutting her head out like she's got nothing to prove; and yet, Michael thinks, she does — the alien distress call does not, categorically, sound _totally like Bruce Springsteen._

 

**promise:**

"…Don't tell your mother," Paul says, taking in the partially destroyed holodeck, and a five-year old Jim solemnly links his pinkie with his own.

 

**mind:**

As her meditative state wavers, Sarek's eyebrow notches ever higher and fizzles out into dead air; _Note to self,_ Michael thinks, _never attempt to contact Sarek via mind-meld whilst the baby is crying._

 

**inside:**

Turning up the Kasselian opera, Winona throws a boot at the locked door and flops onto the bed, resolutely ignoring Cadet Kirk's drunken serenade on the other side.

 

**over:**

"It's alright, it's alright," Detmer finds herself repeating as they speed away from Tarsus IV at max warp, arms wrapped around a too-thin kid who absolutely cannot be Jim Kirk, and barely hears Pike giving orders to contact Stamets as soon as possible.

 

**forest:**

"Winnie, I think I have a splinter," Cadet Kirk whines, and Winona rolls her eyes at the nickname as she scrapes some shavings off of a tree (before promptly getting one herself).

 

**enemy:**

" _Red alert,"_ the speakers blare, and Tilly grits her teeth as the Kobayashi Maru, yet again, explodes.

 

**friend:**

"Has he always been like this?" __Bones asks, gesturing towards Jim in sickbay, and it takes all of Paul's self control not to start laughing.

 

**early:**

As he rocks little Winona to sleep for the _fourth_ time that night, Bryce decides that he's never _ever_ going to offer to babysit for the Stametses again.

 

**making history:**

"I do," George says, slipping a tritanium ring onto her finger, and Winona marvels at the fact that they're probably the first couple to get hitched on the holodeck (and vows not to think about how, since the door has disappeared, they're essentially stuck in Venice, circa 1986).

 

**hope:**

Paul walks toward the single life sign they could find, praying for the best, and finds himself staring down at the sole, tiny survivor of the virus that wiped out hundreds on the USS Meili.

 

**tree:**

Detmer assumes a tree pose, watching as Winona copies her, and smiles.

 

**leave:**

Kissing both George Samuel and Jim on their foreheads, Winona shoots a sad smile at her father as he claps a hand on her back, before boarding the shuttle to the airport — and then, Nairobi — and then, beyond.

 

**sand:**

"Dad, when you said _come with me to work today,_ I didn't think I'd miss the winter formal," his daughter says, and glares at Paul with all of her seventeen-year-old fury as she stands in the middle of the cold desert, a thin scarf covering her face.

 

**desert:**

Jim dumps the nearly-crushed-by-falling-in-the-quarry Corvette somewhere outside the San Francisco city limits, takes one last look at his mother's prized possession and walks towards the ship bound for the colony of Tarsus IV.

 

**flowers:**

Owosekun tucks a apple blossom behind Detmer's ear and squeezes her hand as they watch Winona playing on the swings with an Andorian child.

 

**cave:**

Saru stops at the sick bay, sees Winona Stamets, asleep under a cave of sheets with her head dropped down onto a picture-book page written in both Klingon and English, and resolves to take a picture for her father.

 

**trace:**

"I feel like I'm constantly running," she confesses, running her fingers over the etched name — _Hugh —_ and the _here lies_ of the father Winona never knew, "and now I'm running in the right direction."

 

**family:**

Paul's grandson is too small, too heart-breakingly weary — and, as he looks in those familiar blue eyes, too much like his mother for him _not_ to take in Jim; so, standing there in the shuttle bay, he makes the decision to do _exactly_ that.


	2. twenty-one to forty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winona attends her first lecture at the academy, Jim is a Stamets _and_ a Kirk and Paul watches the universe go by through a window.

**obsession:**

_Us Stametses have a tendency to hyperfixtate,_ Winona's father says, but as soon as she walks into her first lecture on the mycelial network and sees exactly how much went into Paul Stamets's work on _Discovery_ she has to take a moment.

 

**moving:**

It takes a thousand arguments between her and Frank, and Captain Tilly having to give express orders, but eventually Winona gets together her things and starts to uproot her life, leave her boys behind and worry if it's really a good idea to leave them with him.

 

**birthday:**

"Make a wish," Paul says, before he lifts up Winona to 'blow out' _(she's one, Captain, I’d be amazed if she knew what a candle was)_ her cake and laughs when she brushes past the frosting and gets Command-yellow sugar on her nose.

 

**destruction:**

As the Kelvin explodes in the distance, taking George with it, Winona sobs, curling into a ball and clinging to the lifeline in her arms.

 

**hallucination:**

Michael stands by Sarek and Spock's side on New Vulcan, looking to the horizon, and pretends that she can't hear Amanda's screams anymore.

 

**illusion:**

There is a truth to every lie, Jim knows, and wonders where the truth is in his step-father's behaviour now his mom's left.

 

**theatre:**

"Now, did that suck?" Cadet Kirk — _George —_ asks, and Winona, laughing, has to admit that she'd never thought rapping could be in a musical — about the beginning of the pre-Federation government, to boot — and shakes her head no.

 

**invisible:**

"… Because you're a Stamets," Pike says, once, and Jim startles because no-one has seen him as anything other than George Kirk's son before.

 

**pretty:**

There's something utterly beautiful about the way the galaxy looks in the dead of simulated night, Paul thinks, and presses his hand against the tempered glass.

 

**disturbing:**

"We're practicing the pre-Federation holiday of Hallowe'en," Saru states, as if that explains the slick of blood that Winona has splashed on her face and how they felt the need to frighten Tilly, given that they're also stood in the hospital wing and — did she mention — _also covered in blood._

 

**lost:**

Thousands and thousands of years of Vulcan history, completely destroyed, and all Michael has to show for it is a lifetime full of memories and the ashes of Amanda Grayson between her shaking hands.

 

**horse:**

"…Why the long face?" Winona delivers the punchline, and looks up to see her father with a face twisted in what looks like actual pain.

 

**sanctuary:**

George Samuel never does find his way to Grandad's place in Riverside, but Jim makes his home there anyway.

 

**hate:**

The first thing Paul does when they dock in Iowa is punch Frank Davis in the face.

 

**nest:**

"It appears to a habitat of some sort," Spock comments, and Michael has to stop him from poking the bird's nest — although it might be in the name of scientific discovery, her younger brother does not deserve to be pecked to death by an angry mother.

 

**school:**

"We'll teach her," Paul says, and Winona reaches out from where she is in his arms, tugs Pike's hair and gurgles as if to say _yes, Captain, Discovery is completely equipped to deal with a growing baby girl running around._

 

**planet:**

"I knew you couldn't have been born on Earth," George says, slowly, after she spills the beans of how Discovery — how her dad — found her, and when Winona turns he's smiling like a sleaze and she punches him in the arm before he blurts out that it's because her body's _otherworldly_ or whatever.

 

**height:**

Paul draws a pencil line on the wall above his grandson's head and compares them with his daughter's as Jim steps away from the markings.

 

**lake:**

There's something about the rushing and the way the water is flowing upstream that makes Winona think that this planet isn't like Earth at all, despite the trees that look _just like_ California redwoods, so she flips open her communicator and pages Saru.

 

**thief:**

They've found her half-destroyed Corvette stashed away on a by-road near the Starfleet shipping docks, Winona is told, but they don't find Jim until much, much later (and George Samuel, halfway to god-knows-where, is long, long gone by then).


	3. forty-one to sixty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winona is a patient, a doctor and a visitor in sickbay, Jim gets drunk and Paul's house feels empty.

**silence:**

After eighteen years of Winona, the Stamets house seems incredibly lonely without her there, Paul thinks.

 

**workshop:**

"Wrench," her father says, and Winona's tiny hand slaps the instrument into his.

 

**number:**

Jim tries to call the set of digits the hot Starfleet chick (Uhura?) gave him, but it keeps on saying it's disconnected and — well, a fake number never discouraged him, he thinks, and makes plans to go out later that night.

 

**red:**

There's his cadet uniform lying on his tiny Academy bed, freshly ironed, and Jim turns to stare at his roommate who grumbles something at him about _presentation at your hearing._

 

**song:**

Saru only knows Kelpien lullabies, but the baby — they really need a name for her — can't tell the difference yet, so he sings them instead.

 

**tramp:**

"I hate Disney," Winona grumbles, but sits down in the Kelvin sickbay to watch the one with the dogs with the spaghetti and meatballs for the fiftieth time with a feverish George anyway.

 

**strawberries:**

"He's allergic," Jim's grandpa says on video chat about the hypos, and Bones bites back a billion stories about having to stab him with them despite that fact after he decided to eat his _favourite fruit_ yet again and 'forgetting' he's goddamn allergic.

 

**accident:**

Paul rushes into Medical, brushing past Doctor Pollard and going straight to his daughter's side — "Why have you got a piece of rebar in your leg?" he asks, and Winona — well, she just shrugs.

 

**alpha:**

"…Isn't that radioactive?" Chekov asks, uncertainly, when Jim's finished regaling the long story of how he ended up being punched in a Riverside bar, but Jim's drunk and _radioactive_ sounds too much like _wadiowactive_ for him to keep a straight face.

 

**animals:**

"Admiral Archer had a dog," the kid says, eyes wide, and Pike steels himself for the answer he's gonna have to give her; "Can we — _Discovery —_ get a dog?"

 

**opportunity:**

"There's a spot open for you at the Academy," Pike says, as if the busted lip Jim's got isn't enough to convince him to sign up.

 

**yellow:**

Winona sits next to her son in the seat next to his life-support as he recovers, fingers buried deep in a golden square of his Starfleet uniform that Spock had managed to salvage for her.

 

**shadow:**

Whenever he visits _Discovery_ , Ash Tyler tends to stick to the back of any room he's in and has an uncanny habit of making those in it forget his being there whilst they discuss matters — it's easier that way, he's found.

 

**blood:**

As practised in the art of Kolinar as Michael may be, the council of Vulcan has never expected her to bleed green.

 

**bird:**

Proud, Paul watches Winona as she — very carefully, _there we go,_ tongue stuck out — sets the robin's wing straight with a popsicle stick and thinks of what his husband would say about their budding medic.

 

**girl:**

"What's her name?" Owosekun asks, cooing over the baby with Airiam, and Stamets hesitates for a second before answering with the lead actress's name from Hugh's favourite movie — _Winona;_ meaning _first-born daughter_.

 

**book:**

A sixteen-year-old Jim runs his finger down the cracked spine of an old book in his grandfather's library room and flips it open to look at the names inside; _Paul Stamets_ in careful, precise ink, _age 12,_ and _Winona Stamets,_ scrawled in blue biro, _age 15._

 

**entry:**

Pike, alone in his ready room, clears his throat and begins his Captain's Log before breaking off as he sees Lieutenant Rhys run past, Winona hot on his heels.

 

**sun:**

"Waking up next to you is the highlight of my day," George states, tucking a flyaway hair behind Winona's ear as the morning light leaks into their room bit by bit.

 

**truth:**

_Your father would be so proud of you, Captain,_ Mom says to him somewhere outside of the hug Grandad's crushing him in, and Jim Kirk grins.


	4. sixty-one to eighty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winona confronts other people, Jim comes home and Paul leaves one.

**dance:**

L'Rell sees exactly where Ash's going with his sword and parries him, mirroring his every stance like some kind of twisted waltz as they spar.

 

**trouble:**

"Oh, shit," Jim says, minimises the video-chat between himself and his mother, and runs out of his room — _why aren't the goddamn shields up?_ he thinks, and the Enterprise shakes as another pulse hits it.

 

**rose:**

"Happy Valentine's Day," Winona spits, almost throwing the wilting bouquet in her crush's face, and stalks off.

 

**happiness:**

"Jim? Is it really you?" His mother asks, breathless, and despite every bone in his body that shies away from human contact Jim lets her touch his face and contorts it into something that (he hopes) looks like a smile — _hi, Mom._

 

**blanket:**

Tilly flushes, stammers out, "I — we made you something, a — well, a going away present for you and Winona because you're _retiring_ and _she's going to high school_ and _you won't be on Discovery anymore_ — and — and —" and Burnham elbows her in the side; so, she presses the blanket made of the various uniforms they've had over the years stitched together into Stamets's chest and watches as he thanks her, subdued.

 

**young:**

George passes baby George Samuel to Paul and, later, to his wife, swears he sees his father-in-law wiping away a tear.

 

**education:**

"Repeat after me," Mr. Tyler says, and Winona nods, hand resting over the PADD she'd been using to take notes, " _Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam_."

 

**office:**

There is a single photograph that Spock has taken from his office at the academy — it is, he grimly notes, outdated for the way their family looks now, but he keeps it purely for archival reasons; Michael's hairstyle is reminiscent of the trends of that year, his father is holding an almanac for that time and his mother is alive.

 

**sleepless:**

_We can't find either of them,_ they're saying, over and over again, so Winona stays up that night, looking at her messages for some sign — and her Dad stays up with her, halfway across the world.

 

**spring:**

Planting another bulb in the garden, Paul ticks off another notch on his to-do list with satisfaction — Winona's crouched next to him, letting George Samuel smell the _pretty flowers_ before her and George depart for the Kelvin and leave him with his Grandad.

 

**life:**

She tells him like this: "I'm _pregnant_ , George," Winona snaps, "so if you really want to go strand yourself at the ass-end of the universe whilst your child grows up _be my guest!"_

 

**rain:**

As Jim passes him the lid of the rainwater tank, Paul looks down into the clear water that's trickled down over the past few days, sees his own face, laughter lines pronounced, staring back at him, and shakes his head.

 

**flying:**

Paul and Winona watch as Discovery pulls away from the Iowa City spaceport dock and wave goodbye, despite knowing that the crew won't be able to see them from all the way down on the ground.

 

**angry:**

"You _said_ you wanted to _help me,"_ she snarls, an inch away from tearing Frank's goddamn head off with only her bare hands, "and yet when I ask you to look after my kids — _your_ kids, by law — they _both_ run away. Why couldn't I see what you were before I married —" and then she breaks off, shaking; when she recovers from her outburst, Winona simply spits at him, "I want a _divorce_."

 

**saturday:**

The Kelvin survivors return on Saturday, and as soon as Paul sees his daughter with a bundle in her arms — and without his son-in-law by her side — he knows something's wrong.

 

**moon:**

Detmer hides the engagement ring inside a small sample bag that's identical to the ones Stamets's crew has just used on the moon surface and passes it to Owosekun, asking her to check if it's empty or not — luckily, as she'd hoped, her partner's curiosity spikes and, when she opens it, Detmer's already down on one knee.

 

**music:**

"Favourite song?" Winona hums, adjusts her position on the Academy mattress and faces George fully. " _Intergalactic._ Beastie Boys. You?"

 

**archive:**

Taking a deep breath, Michael begins to flick through the Vulcan texts they managed to save from files that were already uploaded to the Federation archives (and, for the number they salvaged, there's an infinite amount of information and history they couldn't.)

 

**farm:**

The Riverside Kirk family farmyard hasn't been lived in for around thirty years by the time Jim moves out of his Grandad's place, so he tries to fix it up — and yeah, it's hard, a bartender's salary doesn’t compare at all to what he could've worked with if he didn't have a rap sheet the size of a cave on Qo'nos.

 

**purple:**

The baby — James Tiberius, Winona tells him — is wrapped in his mother's lilac blanket tightly and Paul's very suddenly hit with a lifetime of memories made on Discovery with his own kid.


	5. and eighty-one to a hundred

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Winona goes to a wedding, Jim finds a family in the stars and Paul looks after his own. (END.)

**pain:**

There's a scream behind those blue eyes, behind the window to the contaminated chamber, and as Spock presses his hand to the glass he knows his own are — in a rare moment that can be blamed on the half of him that is human — showing the exact same emotion.

 

**wedding:**

Owosekun and Detmer throw their twin bouquets behind themselves together, and twirl around just in time to see their niece — and her boyfriend _(?)_ — catch them; Winona is holding hers away from her chest as if it's been infested by greenfly, blushing hard, and George Kirk has _very_ quickly passed his to Burnham.

 

**midnight:**

Though it's the middle of the night in Nairobi, Winona doesn't mind staying up to get the chance to talk with her son — she's missed too much in Jim's life already.

 

**sugar:**

Okay, admittedly, swapping the salt and sugar is kind of a lame April Fools Day prank, but — _"Dammit, Jim!"_

 

**light:**

"Lights to forty percent;" and suddenly his daughter's head pokes out from under her comforter with her flashlight off and pulls a contrite face at Paul, her copy of _Encyclopaedia Brittanica_ being quietly moved to and closed on her bedside table.

 

**winter:**

A couple of months have passed since the bulbs in Stamets's flower garden have all bloomed and died, and as Michael stands in his kitchen with a cup of tea in her hands and George Samuel colouring in a picture next to her, she marvels at how bare all the trees are now in this small part of the universe.

 

**dirty:**

When Jim is finally released from the juvenile holding cell — which, in this town, is the same as the holding cell for everyone — he makes a beeline for the crashed Corvette, and before he climbs back in and discovered that the crumpled thing does, in fact, still purr like a kitten, he looks down at his dusty clothes and does a tiny brush-off.

 

**style:**

"You are _not_ wearing that to the wedding," Aunt Sylvia declares, and Winona has to stifle a giggle as Auntie Michael stops her twirl, offended.

 

**photo:**

There's not a single image of his family all together anyway, so Jim's elected to have three different ones in his ready room — his father's Starfleet portrait photograph, stuck next to a frame of himself, Grandad, George Samuel and his mother on a rare fishing trip together, just them, and, of course, the official Enterprise class photo hung on his wall.

 

**quick:**

On Tarsus IV, Kodos goads, " _Shoot me, then, little soldier boy,"_ and Jim, rising from Kevin Riley's unconscious body, reaches for the phaser he stole from one of the guards and fires it before anyone can stop him.

 

**good morning:**

"Good morning," Paul says, _sotto voce,_ bouncing baby Winona on his hip whilst she tries to grab at his hair, "someone slept through the night, didn't she? Yes, she _did!"_

 

**bar:**

Jim does eventually lose his job tending at the local Riverside bar, but he still goes in the next day for a drink.

 

**painting:**

Oils have spilled into watercolours for Michael and his family to be how it is, and Spock, as the humans say, _wouldn't change it for the world_.

 

**empty:**

Among the fallen officers is Christopher Pike, the news reports later that evening, and the former crew of Discovery all mourn in their own way, including the smallest member; Winona stands at the funeral procession between Bryce and Rhys, watching her son talk with his own crew and trying not to focus too hard on any one memory.

 

**mystery:**

"You want to get there in two _days_ — Cap'n," Scotty impresses, pointing at his chest, and Jim raises his eyebrows, "unless you're hidin' a mycelium spore drive somewhere in that barrel of a thing you call a torso, I have no idea how —"

 

**hot:**

"Ouch!" Jim yelps, putting the steaming chicken soup down on the table and touching his tongue; Bones narrows his eyes and grumbles something like _should have listened to me when I said 'you might want to let it cool for a bit', idjit._

 

**heaven:**

Wherever Hugh is now, Paul knows that he would be as proud of Winona's graduation as he is; his hands hurt from clapping too hard as she goes up for the slip of paper that states her degree and her assignment — Medicinal Sciences, USS _Kelvin,_ under Captain Tilly.

 

**police:**

There's freedom running through Jim's veins now, as he races down the road in the Corvette, and there's also _no_ way a cop on a _hovercruiser_ is going to take that from him.

 

**truck:**

On the day that Winona leaves for Starfleet Academy, with her life packed away in synthesised cardboard at the back of a moving truck, Paul hugs her tighter than he ever has before — and he does the same thing to Jim when he leaves too.

 

**house:**

Both sides of his family have always felt at home amongst the stars, and, as the repaired Enterprise begins its five-year mission, James Tiberius Stamets Kirk leans back into the captain's chair and lets the universe settle around him like a familiar coat.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
